Michael Connelly - The Overlook

He got all the way up the steps and back to the ER before the dispatcher came back on the line.

“The call you asked about came in at ten-oh-five from a phone registered to Easy Print at nine-thirty Cahuenga Boulevard. Man down in the parking lot. Fire department paramedics responded from station fifty-four. Response time six minutes, nineteen seconds. Anything else?”

“What’s the nearest cross at that location?”

After a moment the dispatcher told him the cross street was Lankershim Boulevard. Bosch thanked her and disconnected.

The address where Gonzalves collapsed was not far from the Mulholland overlook. Bosch realized that almost every location associated with the case so far-from the murder site to the victim’s house to Ramin Samir’s house and now to the spot where Gonzalves collapsed-could fit on one page of a Thomas Brothers map book. Murder cases in L.A. usually dragged him all over the map book. But this one wasn’t roaming. It was staying close.

Bosch looked around the ER. He noticed that all the people who had been crowding the waiting room before were now gone. There had been an evacuation and agents in protective gear were moving about the area with radiation monitors. He spotted Rachel Walling by the nursing station and walked over to her. He held out the canister.

“Here’s the guy’s stuff.”

She took the canister and put it down on the floor, then called over to one of the men in protection gear. She told him to take charge of the canister. She then looked back at Bosch.

“There’s a cell phone in there,” he told her. “They might be able to get something out of that.”

“I’ll tell them.”

“How’s the victim doing?”

“Victim?”

“Whether he’s involved in this or not he is still a victim.”

“If you say so. He’s still out of it. I don’t know if we’ll ever get the chance to talk to him.”

“Then I’m leaving.”

“What? Where? I’m going with you.”

“I thought you had to run the CP.”

“I passed it off. If there’s no cesium here I’m not staying. I’ll stick with you. Let me just tell some people I’m leaving to follow a lead.”

Bosch hesitated. But deep down he knew he wanted her with him.

“I’ll be out front in the car.”

“Where are we going?”

“I don’t know if Digoberto Gonzalves is a terrorist or just a victim, but I do know one thing. He drives a Toyota. And I think I know where we’ll find it.”

HARRY BOSCH KNEW that the physics of traffic would not work for him in the Cahuenga Pass. The Hollywood Freeway always moved slowly in both directions through the bottleneck created by the cut in the mountain chain. He decided to stay on surface streets and take Highland Avenue past the Hollywood Bowl and up into the pass. He filled Rachel Walling in along the way.

“The call for paramedics came from a print shop on Cahuenga near Lankershim. Gonzalves must have been in the area when he collapsed. The initial call said a man was down in the parking lot. I’m hoping that the Toyota he was driving is right there. I’m betting that if we find it, we find the cesium. The mystery is why he had it.”

“And why he was foolish enough to put it in his pocket unprotected,” Walling added.

“You’re basing that on him knowing what he had. Maybe he didn’t. Maybe this isn’t what we think it is.”

“There’s got to be a connection, Bosch, between Gonzalves and Nassar and El-Fayed. He probably brought them across the border.”

He almost smiled. He knew she had used his last name as a term of endearment. He remembered how she used to do that.

“And don’t forget about Ramin Samir?” he said.

Walling shook her head.

“I’m still thinking he was a red herring,” she said. “A misdirection.”

“A good one,” Bosch responded. “It took the mighty Captain Done Badly out of the picture.”

She laughed.

“Is that what they call him?”

Bosch nodded.

“Not to his face, of course.”

“And what do they call you? Something tough and hard-headed, I’m sure.”

He glanced over at her and shrugged. He thought about telling her that his Vietnam nickname was Hari Kari but that would require further explanation and there wasn’t the time right now and this wasn’t the place.

He took the ramp up to Cahuenga from Highland. It ran parallel to the freeway and as soon as he checked he saw that he had been right. The traffic over on the freeway was frozen in both directions.

“You know, I still had your number in my cell’s directory,” he said. “I guess I never wanted to delete it.”

“I was wondering about that when you left me that mean message today about the cigarette ash.”

“I don’t suppose you kept mine, Rachel.”

She paused a long moment before answering.

“I think you’re still on my phone, too, Harry.”

This time he had to smile, even though he was back to being Harry with her. There’s hope after all, he thought.

They were approaching Lankershim Boulevard. To the right it dropped down into a tunnel that went beneath the freeway. To the left it ended at a strip shopping center that included the Easy Print franchise from which the call to paramedics had originated. Bosch’s eyes searched the vehicles in the small parking lot, looking for a Toyota.

He glided into the left-turn lane and waited to pull into the lot. He swiveled in his seat and checked the parking along both sides of Cahuenga. A quick glance showed no Toyotas but he knew that there were many different car models and pickup trucks in the brand. If they didn’t find the car in the print shop lot, then they would have to work the curbside parking looking for it.

“Do you have a plate or any description?” Walling asked. “How about a color?”

“No, no and no.”

Bosch remembered then that she had the habit of asking multiple questions at once.

He made the turn on yellow and pulled into the lot. There were no parking spaces available but he wasn’t interested in parking. He cruised slowly, checking each car. There were no Toyotas.

“Where’s a Toyota when you need one?” he said. “It’s got to be in this area somewhere.”

“Maybe we should check the street,” Walling suggested.

He nodded and nosed his car into the alley at the end of the parking lot. He was going to turn left to turn around and go back to the street. But when he checked to see if he was clear on the right he saw an old white pickup truck with a camper shell parked half a block down the alley next to a green trash Dumpster. The truck was facing them and he couldn’t tell what the make of it was.

“Is that a Toyota?” he asked.

Walling turned and looked.

“Bosch, you’re a genius,” she exclaimed.

Bosch turned and drove toward the truck and as he got closer he could see that it was indeed a Toyota. So could Walling. She pulled out her phone but Bosch reached across and put his hand on it.

“Let’s just check it out first. I could be wrong about this.”

“No, Bosch, you’re on a roll.”

But she put the phone away. Bosch pulled slowly past the pickup, giving it a once-over. He then turned around at the end of the block and came back. He stopped his car ten feet behind it. There was no plate on the back. A cardboard LOST TAG sign had been put in its place.

Bosch wished he had brought the keys he had found in Digoberto Gonzalves’s pocket. They got out and approached the truck, coming up on either side of it. When he got close Bosch noticed that the rear window hatch of the camper shell had been left open a couple of inches. He reached forward and pulled it up all the way. An air-pressure hinge held it open. Bosch leaned in close to look into the interior. It was dark because the truck was parked in shadow and the windows on the shell were darkly tinted.